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Good Europeans
Polly Toynbee, in one of her periodical diatribes against newspapers that sell more than The Guardian accuses the British people of being "the worst Europeans."
What, then, makes a good European?
Unlike the Irish (twice), the French, the Dutch or the Swedes, the British have never rejected deeper integration through a referendum (we haven't been offered the chance).
Even when the French voted to accept the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, they did so by just over half a million votes: This "petit oui" was hardly a massive vote of confidence in the European Project.
We're not in the single currency, but then neither are all the New Europeans who joined in 2005, or indeed the entire complement of Scandinavians, who Polly professes to admire so much.
Yes, those Scandinavians. Norway isn't even a member of the EU (its people voted no to entry in 1994). Sweden refused to join the single currency in a referendum in 2003, the Danes rejected the Euro in 2000. Both Denmark and Sweden return more MEPs from Eurosceptic parties than the British. Of 14 Danish MEPs, three are in Eurosceptic groups - 20 percent; of 19 Swedes, another three are in Eurosceptic groupings in the Parliament - 15 percent. In Britain, 11 of 78 MEPs - 14 percent - are returned as members of Eurosceptic groupings.
Throw in those who sit with hard-left groupings who aren't officially Eurosceptic but call for the dismantling of the current EU and its replacement with another, and the toll for Scando-Sceptics is even higher.
At least the Danes respect EU directives. Along with Spain, Finland and - yes, Britain - Denmark is the EU's best pupil for incorporating directives into law.
Who's worst? France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Greece and Italy. In 2003, France and Italy together accounted for 28% of Internal Market infringement cases in the EU. By the end of that year, Britain had one directive overdue almost three years: France had seven, Luxembourg eight.
All this without a murmur of complaint from the British.
And then the Stability Pact, cornerstone of the European Single Currency, which France and Germany broke with abandon in the years 2003 onwards. The EU has almost tired of pursuing the Big Two on this issue, much to the despair of smaller nations who worked hard to fit their economies into Euro-order. Yes, Britain is breaking its spending commitments too - but no British PM has said, as French PM Jean-Pierre Raffarin did, that the Stability Pact is for the "little countries."
Sorry to upset you Polly, but on this record, and despite widespread scepticism about the EU (not in itself a crime, yet) Britain is one of the European Union's best little soldiers. What's striking for us is that levels of Euroscepticism remain high, even though Britain sticks to EU targets by and large and refuses its citizens a vote on EU constitutional issues.
Perhaps if we started ignoring directives like the French and allowing votes on Treaties like the Irish, we might start loving the EU a lot more?
